The World

Dissident Russian Orthodox priest Gleb Yakunin, jailed and exiled for "slandering the (Soviet) state," is being allowed to return home to Moscow from Siberia, Yelena Bonner said. Bonner, wife of dissident physicist Andrei D. Sakharov, told reporters that Yakunin, 52, had telephoned her to say he was being allowed to leave the tiny village in Yakutia, eastern Siberia, where he has been in internal exile since 1985. Yakunin, founder of the Christian Committee for the Defense of Believers' Rights in the Soviet Union, was sentenced in 1980 to five years in jail and five years of exile.